EDH/Commander: Alela, Faerie Tribal

[Cardinal_T_R_K]

https://deckstats.net/decks/136764/1404871-alela-faerie-tribal

[G. Moto]

Alela is a nice commander and i'm actually considering having her be the commander of one of my old decks as well. So lay it on me; What's the playstyle, what's the intended strategy with the deck, how do you win and what do you look for in card choices? Faeries are notorious little tricksters so playing stuff that steals people's cards or bounces cards is what comes to my mind first. But i'm interested on hearing your ideas.

[Cardinal_T_R_K]

Faeries are indeed notorious for being tricky and more often than not stealing whats not their's making the playstyle almost a sort of tempo with a mixture of swinging big while still holding up responses in the form of creatures. Having said that the main stategy for winning with this deck, more often than not, is to generate a large number of faerie tokens using alela and using anthem effects to pump them up and swing big. On top of this most all faeries have flash which is extremely useful and relevant since we can cast our creatures at instant speed and almost all of them have a enter the battlefield effect that can either disrupt our opponents hands and or boardstates (i.e. sower of temptation, vendilion clique, etc.). We can utilize these effects to help protect or boardstates from potential threats or answers while also hindering our opponents game plan. Of course we can't expect this strategy to consistently work as im sure we can expect frequent board wipes to slow us down. That being said if having an army of faeries won't work, there is the alternative of using either pili-pala and grand architect or deadeye navigator and peregrine drake to generate infinite mana and using blue suns zenith to deck our opponents. Having said that, this deck was not designed to be overly competitive, and there are some upgrades to it that I would recommend such as panharmonicon to double our etb effects, mystical tutor and merchant scroll to grab blue suns zenith, etc. This was more designed to be a tad more casual, but still potent, tribal deck for faeries since alela gives us a much better toolset than oona to build this specific list. I'm i terested on building seperate more competive list for her later which will focus more on the artifact and enchantment synergy side of alela.

[G. Moto]

would you consider adding strionic resonator and portal of sanctuary to the deck? This way you get to reuse those etb effects, save creatures from their almost certain demise and you get multiple triggers on the etb effects like with panharmonicon. Also since you're running flyers you could run sephara sky's blade so all your little tricksters are indestructible. And just for good measure if you do decide to focus on discarding you could add fell specter (also a flyer), raiders' wake and liliana's caress for extra damage on discards. You could also run mirror image with the fell specter and mistmeadow witch to get some solid bounce and etb recursion that way as well. What do you think of these suggestions?

[Cardinal_T_R_K]

These are all wonderful suggestions! Lets start with strionic and portal. Strionic resonator isn't a terrible pick and with panharmonicon could be excellent in terms of synergy. I don't know how consistently those two cards will pair together however so outside of that it will likely see most of its use in doubling Alela's trigger which i suppose 2 mana to produce one more faerie on a trigger isn't terrible, albeit only once per turn. Portal I like as well but it's shortcoming is I can only activate it during my turn, so as a reactive piece to something such as a wrath it is unfortunately ineffective unless the wrath is instant speed and being cast during my turn. As a potential piece to get more ETB value however is where it does shine and makes at a solid include. I'm honestly unsure how I forgot about sephara but I completely agree it should be in the deck, so I'll make that small amendment shortly. As for the discard strategy, It's a pretty good idea although I think at that point I'd make a separate list to focus in on that specifically. Mistmeadow witch may be a good include as a backup piece to deadeye, although deadeye outclasses it in every way possible being two mana cheaper to activate and it offers a blink effect as opposed to mistmeadows flicker. Granted mistmeadow protects against wraths unlike deadeye hence why I see it as a good include. That being said I had considered running venser, shaper savant as a potential lock out piece, using deadeye navigator and peregrine drake to produce infinite mana and then re-pair deadeye to venser to bounce my opponents board states and to keep them from ever resolving spells.

[G. Moto]

I do apologize for not replying to your last post. I've been away taking care of family and dealing with uncontrollable circumstances in the work place. But i am glad to see that you have taken my words of advice into consideration. I did build my Alela deck so when I get around to it i'll post it on the site at a later date.